This exhibition of recent works by Gloria Friedmann has been divided into two parts, 'Karaoke' and 'Big Bang Parallel'. Both aspects offer new expressions of Friedmann's ongoing preoccupations with civilisation and the environment - and the relationship between them.
The Karaoke paintings - ten of which are in this exhibition - offer bright and vivid panels incorporating preserved tropical birds against a smooth painted backdrop which replicates their plumage. As Friedmann herself identifies, the painting mimics the bird like the bird mimics sound (giving rise to the Karaoke analogy).
The Big Bang Parallel works comprise four large-scale pieces which develop Friedmann's concerns with evolution. Incorporating a preserved ape and animal bones these works become symbolic of ƒlife in the past, present and future both on Earth and beyond it.
Gloria Friedmann has been exhibiting since 1980 when she had a one-person show at the Musee National d'Art Moderne in Paris and was represented at the Paris Biennale. Since then she has had an extensive series of individual and group exhibitions across Europe and in the United States. From 1990 she has worked on 'tableux vivants': living temporary installations in which animals are placed in urban environments alongside items of contemporary material culture: shopping trolleys, cars, oil drums ...
This current exhibition - her fourth at Annely Juda Fine Art - is an exciting development of ideas presented by her previous work. Characteristically this new collection of work presents the conflict between humanity and nature with an arresting visual aesthetic - harmonising natural objects with manmade. The result is simultaneously appealing to the senses and to social awareness.
